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When the cat's away the mouse will play

The Governing Council of a local Cambodian NGO, elected representatives of community self-help groups of disabled people, who pursued a complaint against a UK charity 2008-13 on behalf of their members, 800 families in Tuok Phos District, Kampong Chhnang province, Cambodia. Photograph John Lowrie.

Foreword:

Public life comes
under scrutiny and fire whenever someone falls from expected
standards. In developed democracies where there is good knowledge of
standards, usually people falling well-short - and superiors responsible for them - can be held to account. Those are the advantages of an
educated population; a system of checks and balances; rule of law and
a free press to try to bring about accountability.

When it comes to
“#foreignaid” and charities operating abroad, such as OXFAM and
Save the Children who were recently caught up in scandals, those
advantages don't usually exist. It is therefore almost inevitable
that some people will take advantage of such laxities.

The point I want to
make is that where you have people prone to taking
advantage of laxities, you should not examine incidences in isolation, as
tends to be the case. Even then they are examined only when
transgressions come to light, when many never emerge; they're covered up. If not often a quick-fix solution is sought, sometimes simply cutting off funding that punishes beneficiaries not perpetrators. My argument is that we need
to change the operating climate, to create a culture of
ethical-working and while each organisation must foster its own, I
still maintain that external inspection is needed to underpin and
enforce it. There must be inspectors to inspect and regulators to
regulate. The possibility alone of such visits is the best way to counter climates of complacency and impunity.

This article was
drafted with this in mind at the request of one website but so far it has not appeared.

Foreign
Aid scandals: unexpected by many; but no surprise to few.

The
“OXFAM” scandal
broke recently at the same time as the world of football or soccer
was rocked by revelations of widespread
abuse
against schoolboy budding stars. They were soon eclipsed by the
Hollywood-led #Metoo campaign after long-held allegations emerged of
sexual
abuse
by Movie Mogul Harvey Weinstein. Then as if those scandals were not
enough to reveal what a sordid world it is in which we live, the
Australian
Royal Commission on child sexual
abuse published its findings.

Such
unexpected news of what goes on in well-known established
institutions was no surprise to some of us but unexpected to most of
the general public. Some of us knew that it was bound to come out
sooner or later. Wherever there is any kind of abuse, there are
powerful people taking advantage of vulnerable people. They have a
hold over them. They use their position to carry out all kinds of
abuses; in secrecy, with impunity, and in the most unlikely of
places.

My
colleague Andrew Little and I were not expecting to receive death
threats
in 2001. We were working in a Cambodian human rights organisation,
the most unlikely place to violate the right to life. We took the
hint and moved on to diverging careers, continents apart. Since then
the two of us have stayed in touch, with a few new like-minded
friends, to pursue the ethical causes originating in those unexpected
times.

Andrew
had joined me when I was suddenly thrust in charge of a human rights
organisation after its Executive Director and its Finance Director
feuded. The latter wrote an eight-page Christmas letter to donors
alleging systematic fraud. Our task was to keep the NGO going and to
arrange proper investigations. We organized an immediate external
audit. However we needed to do more as the auditors would only
examine the finances within their limited professional mandates. The
allegations extended in to nepotism and cronyism. Andrew's task was
therefore to conduct what we called a “staff audit” to expose the
full picture.

Our
case all those years ago should have been an early lesson for the
foreign aid fraternity. It wasn't. Only 20 years later are public
perceptions changing so “unexpected
and uncharacteristic”
is replaced by “expected;
quite likely and not at all untypical”.

The
essential lesson was simple. Wherever there is impropriety of any
kind, for example fraud, you will find other improprieties exist -
in the way that people are employed; rewarded, promoted and allowed
to behave. Transgressions flourish because of serious gaps in the
governance of organisations and failures in vital processes designed
as checks and balances or to meet due diligence criteria. In
essence, you have what is second nature to air-crash investigators,
that rarely is there just one cause to a disaster but usually a
combination of causes. Whereas that lesson applies to prevent other
air crashes, Andrew and I had discovered, unexpectedly, no equivalent
in the world of foreign aid and public service to avoid foreseeable
disasters.

“Capacity-building”
is a vogue term in #foreignaid. It means training sessions to add
skills and knowledge. Indeed it is one of the largest elements in
budgets especially where it takes place in 4/5
star hotels the favoured choices. It occupies vast use of human
resources often greater than expended in the field implementing
development aid or human rights projects. Too often the primary
purpose is overlooked that it is all intended to help poor
beneficiaries, to make a difference in their lives, not just of salaried public service and NGO workers. A means to
an end, not an end in own right.

To
cut a long story short neither of us were able to complete our
mission. The NGO folded. We lacked unanimous support within the
NGO, from most of its staff whose loyalties were elsewhere. Their
jobs were at serious risk. So was the excellent work they were doing
to promote and protect human rights in a population still suffering
from and traumatized by severe violations. Yet most would not help
us. It was clear to us that what had gone wrong reflected badly on
them and very many other stakeholders responsible for the foreign aid
money supporting the NGO. That was why we think that a calculated decision was
made, far away, that with or without our efforts this NGO should be sacrificed
for the greater good of the wider aid sector, and to avoid high-level
attention descending on donor and diplomatic capitals. Fortunately or
unfortunately , depending on your perspective, the OXFAM scandal has
not escaped a similar fate, not yet.

Our
salutary experience was to prove to be neither our first nor our last
one in our long overseas careers. Andrew first:

“I
once found myself in whistle-blowing capacity for a protestant church
in another country. It had long been mired in financial corruption
protected through bullying by a clique, a culture of cover-up and
other issues that included incidental abuse of orphan children.
There were good people there, but they felt helpless against the
entrenched power structure. Eventually the situation reached the
tipping point where it was intolerable for all but a few, but neither
did those who had concerns feel that they had a voice, and so it fell
to me to blow the whistle. My efforts were rewarded by a thorough
shoot-the-messenger response from an expatriate mentor of the most
senior member of hierarchy.

What was most disconcerting, like
in other situations, was the sense of helplessness among those who
knew what was happening, knew full well it was wrong and ostensibly
had the ability to do something about it. Their sense of
disappointment and even cynicism ran deep. The situation turned
around only after the person most responsible for the corruption was
declared “persona-non-grata”. The church lost a lot of its young
members who had cherished its ideals, all apparently to no avail.
However, at least this episode made for an earlier and more just
outcome than for perpetrators of abuse in the Catholic Church and the
Cardinals and Bishops who sheltered them. There, the pattern of
abuse bears some similarity to what has happened in some NGOs.
Victims were routinely silenced and the power structures perpetuated
a culture of cover-up. In these situations, the welfare of the
abused must, as it appears, be sacrificed on the altar of ‘the good
reputation and fine deeds’ of the institution, but it is precisely
this hypocrisy that hollows out the value of work being done and
leaves many conscientious people, whether working for an NGO or
members of a church, in a position of feeling thoroughly betrayed.”

Betrayal
is also how 800 poor Cambodian families living with disability In Kampong Chhnang felt
when their complaint against a UK charity was rejected after 5 years
of trying and exhausting all options. I had helped them to pursue
it as far as it could possibly go in the UK; in Cambodia; in
Australia and in other donor countries all to no avail. When
thanking those who had helped them I said this in early 2014:

"I
have tried (and so far failed) to persuade UK authorities, that what
is needed is a deterrent culture in overseas development when working
in third world countries with deficient rule of law."

Should
UK regulators have listened? Basically the 800 families had been
promised certain benefits; they claimed that they had received only a
small fraction of them, but an external audit to determine the facts
was blocked by the charity. The beneficiaries thought that the UK
Charities Commission would support them and order the audit
investigation to proceed. They were wrong. It ruled that “Charity
trustees have a wide discretion as to how to run their charities and
it is prohibited from interfering in the internal administration of a
charity”. That
ruling was then endorsed by an Independent Complaints Reviewer and by
the Parliamentary and Health Commissioner (Ombudsman). UK Ministers
and MPs could not act either. Separation of powers meant that they
could not tread on the "sacred ground" of charities. Only the Public
Accounts Committee of the UK Parliament remained open to the question
of whether or not the Charities Commission was appropriately
exercising its regulatory powers. (Please see latest update from UK's National Audit Office below.)

In
#foreignaid in developing countries, it is easy and even
obligatory for volunteers or development workers to be photographed
with children or vulnerable people. This is perhaps the only one
taken of me in 20 years but even then I was careful to be with
adults. Unfortunately others are not so careful. Innocent ones
collect such images to post in their social media to show friendly
encounters, even their good deeds. Not so innocent ones exploit a lax
environment for their own devious ends.

Apart
from the protracted Kampong Chhnang case, around the same time, I was involved in
cases of serious sexual misconduct at work within British NGOs
operating in Cambodia. One was my responsibility; police and
judicial authorities were involved and I dismissed the perpetrators.
The other was with a partner NGO that took no action despite my
remonstrations. I should clarify that the crimes were committed by
local employees, not by expatriates.

Back
to Andrew: “The
point being is that there's a similarity in underlying dynamic.
There's too much at stake in organisations to allow problems to
surface. So they fester and continue to rot unseen.”

Is
this not what the Archbishop of Canterbury was thinking when after a
long pause he told
the Child Sex Abuse enquiry
that he had"learned
to be ashamed again of the Church”.

Is
this dynamic changing for once and for all? Or when the dust settles
will things go back to were they were, with even cleverer more
subversive efforts to cover up?

In
my last two NGOs in Cambodia, not long ago, I requested support to
investigate suspected improprieties including theft of funds meant to
go to beneficiaries. The donors concerned in both cases, both
international foundations, chose to take no action other than to end
their funding, including insisting upon strict instructions of no
publicity. They both concluded that their own organisations and
other partners would be damaged more by revelations of a scandal –
harming their future fundraising - than by writing-off whatever funds
and benefits had gone astray. My suspicions in both cases proved
correct but neither perpetrator has faced justice.

A Community Self-help group in Mondulkiri just like the ones who never received the money awarded and promised to them. Those who took the money and were negligent in the process have never been held to account.

Andrew's
and my early experience in Cambodia did lead to efforts intended to
prevent future scandals in NGOs. Through the NGO umbrella
organisation “Cambodia Co-operation Committee” the sector
developed an NGO
governance
and code of conduct scheme that is still in operation. It has many
merits as well as some drawbacks. The most important merit - if it
can be developed to work well - is to encourage positive results
through best conduct, for the “good apples in the barrel” to
flourish, not the rotten ones. So far, however, it hasn't been a
total success. Improprieties within NGOs persist, followed by
inaction or cover-ups, instead of corrective action.

This
well-intended governance scheme has two major drawbacks. (1) The
weakness of any kind of legislation or regulation relying on
self-policing . (2) The absence of a marked cultural shift in
attitudes and behaviour. In reality the scheme is regarded as a
series of administrative formalities to be overcome or to be got
around. We have advocated wider and more stringent measures to all
“stakeholders” such as these outlined below but so far there has
been little or no interest. Some stakeholders are complacent,
confident in their own measures, or they just do not fear being found
lacking in a country of impunity. Others take the view that any
public questioning of them and their local partners will only play in
to the politics of Cambodia's ruling party, a worse scenario. Like
governments in other authoritarian countries, and some democratic
ones, the ruling party remains deeply suspicious of NGOs, accusing
them of actively supporting the Opposition under the pretence of
promoting essential freedoms. So worthy efforts to root out
misconduct within NGOs would be avidly received to place even more
restrictions on all NGOs including the best ones.

Bearing
that scenario in mind, here are 10 collaborative actions that can be
taken.

Recommendations:

Avoid
mixed messages.
All stakeholders, including private foundations and
philanthropists, need to much clearer in their core values and
principles as well as indicators of positive results. They should
fully share them for optimal collectivized oversight. All parties
must practice what they preach.

The
cultural or ethical climate matters most more
so than detailed codes of conduct that will always be subject to
different interpretation in local contexts and circumstances.
“Keep things simple”
applies also to project management mechanisms that can be too
complex to be understood where they matter most, i.e. at local
implementation-levels.

Retain
competent expertise,
have experienced locally-available/proficient personnel on your
staff or on-call as advisers. Too many foreign aid staff are on
short-term tours of 2-3 years; working without
proper in-country induction or close supervision. They lack local
knowledge of peculiarities and malpractices.They
must not “rock the boat”, their next career-move depends on it.

Insist
on maximum transparency,
especially with your beneficiaries having full information about the
changes to be brought about, far more detail than they are usually
given. It is they who are by far and away best able to decide if
foreign aid interventions work for them.

Deal
promptly with transgressions. All
organisations should be able to act promptly, mobilising support for
managers to validate their actions or to replace them, including
acting decisively when whistle-blowers blow whistles. Investigators
need to be multi-disciplinary. No-one should rely solely on regular
auditors or evaluators because of bias. They may have a vested
interest in repeat commissions. However their institutional
knowledge built up over time is indispensable.

Report
to local police and judicial authorities but do not rely solely on
them. Instead
make sure you can take action against employees and partners within
employment contracts and partnership agreements. This way you can
exercise your own judgements based on evidence, using your own
mechanisms that meet principles of natural justice and best
international standards. In countries like Cambodia, official
authorities are unpredictable. They may under-react as when they
indulge in extra-judicial settlements between perpetrators and
victims. Or they may over-react, when they resort to torture and
extra-judicial detentions to extract confessions.

Preventive
strategies
- invest maximum time and effort to help build and complement your
internal ethical culture with documented operating procedures
conveyed and reinforced in induction training; and through regular
staff; partner and beneficiary meetings.

Conduct
thorough due diligence checks:
(a) Human resources - so key personnel are vetted, with proper
references and complete employment and performance records; (b)
Governing Board or other effective supervisory structures exist and
operate, and (c) annual external full organisational audits are
conducted as well as external evaluations by genuine independent
consultants.

Incorporate
random unannounced external inspections to
take place both during projects and up to two years afterwards to
see that key benchmarks are accomplished; that resources are
expended as per contracts and for the purposes for which the funds
were raised, and that they stay in the service of the intended
beneficiaries.

Regulators
must regulate. Distance
should not mean foreign aid activities are beyond the reach of
regulators, if there is to be an effective deterrent culture against
misconduct and a prevailing affirmative one to produce positive
results.

John
Lowrie is a human resources officer by profession. He has been an aid
and development worker since 1985, working in five developing
countries, and Cambodia since 1998 where he has been country
representative of three international NGOs and formal adviser to
seven local development and human rights organizations.

Andrew
Little is an international translator by profession, originally in
Indonesia before moving to Cambodia and now Germany. He too has
worked with international and local organisations including as a
consultant/adviser and reporting officer to major donors and
diplomatic missions.

Update 10 May 2018
We make the case for external inspections and regulation to help bring about a better ethical culture and improved standards and practices on the part of all concerned in development and human rights projects in developing countries. In this article we referred to what we saw as past shortcomings of the Charities Commission. We have just received a letter from the UK's National Audit Office that sets out clearly measures that have been adopted, with early signs of success, as a result of its efforts; those of the Public Accounts Committee of the UK Parliament, and like-minded colleagues within the #foreignaid sector. It's a promising step forward but only a start not an end and of course this is just one donor country showing the way. Others must follow if there is to be consistency in the international community. Too many donor countries apply their own conditions, not subscribing fully to international co-operation and efforts to promote foreign aid effectiveness. (Paris, Accra, Busan, etc.)